MC Investigation| Outside RBI’s Delhi office, middlemen seek Rs 400 cut to exchange Rs 2000 note

People in queues in front of RBI office in New Delhi

Brazen middlemen, operating right outside the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) office in the National Capital, are making a killing from ‘customers’ seeking to exchange the Rs 2000 notes, charging as much as Rs 400 per bill. The deadline to exchange the withdrawn notes at bank branches ended on October 7, but the facility is still available at RBI offices, which have drawn long queues of people who couldn’t deposit or exchange their notes earlier.

There is a limit of Rs 20,000 per person to exchange these notes.

Sensing a business opportunity, the interlopers have deployed several people to stand in queues to exchange these notes.  They accept a large quantity of such notes from prospective customers, and pay them the amount out of bags of money ready at hand after deducting Rs 300-400 per note. Customers who don’t want to stand in long queues multiple times don’t mind paying the commission to the middlemen.

A Moneycontrol reporter on the ground encountered several such instances in front of the RBI office in New Delhi.

“If you want to exchange your one note of Rs 2000, you need to give us Rs 300-400 per note, depending on the amount you have,” one of the middlemen told Moneycontrol.

Modus operandi

Each middleman has 2-3 people hanging around near the RBI office. One of them generates the lead, convincing a person looking to exchange Rs 2000 notes to take up the offer, and then takes the person to the other two, who are ready with the bags of money.

“Even if you do not want to do this deal here; we can give you the money near whichever metro station is near you. There is no limit; you can even exchange over 1 lakh through us,” said another middleman.

A detailed questionnaire sent to the RBI seeking comments for this story remained unanswered at the time of filing this story.

RBI deadline

On September 30, the RBI had extended the deadline for the public to exchange or deposit Rs 2,000 notes at bank branches until October 7. Banknotes in Rs 2,000 denomination will continue to be legal tender, the central bank added.

Even after October 7, people can also exchange these notes at the 19 RBI Issue Offices across the country, with a limit of Rs 20,000 per transaction. However, both individuals and entities can tender an unlimited number of 2,000 banknotes at RBI Issue Offices if the amount is to be credited into their bank accounts (account details would have to be shared in the form). There is no specified limit for such transactions, as stated by the RBI.

Make hay while…

“I came here to exchange 10 notes, but when I saw this crowd I decided to go to these middlemen. And they have exchanged my notes. I paid Rs 300 per note, which comes out to Rs 3,000. I got Rs 17,000 for my Rs 20,000,” said one person who exchanged his Rs 2000 notes through the middlemen.

Another person, who had come from Delhi’s Rajouri Garden locality said that he had visited the RBI office to exchange notes for two days in a row but had to turn back due to the huge crowd. “The introduction of the Rs 2000 note was made against the black money drive. But here in front of the RBI office, huge black money is happening and no one is stopping it. I’m upset with the system,” said the person, who did not want to be identified.

Long queues seen

There is no separate facility outside the RBI office in Delhi for senior citizens or women and they, too, have to wait in long queues outside the RBI office for more than three hours.

One elderly woman with failing eyesight, who had 22 notes of Rs 2000, said, “I kept Rs 44,000 for my granddaughter so that I can buy her a new laptop to study. And I forgot about it. During Diwali cleaning, I found those notes so I have come here to exchange them and now face this huge rush.”

Poonam, another Delhi resident, told Moneycontrol that she had nine Rs 2000 notes and had to wait for over three hours to exchange them. “There are no proper arrangements for ladies,” she lamented.

Another senior citizen, who came to exchange his notes with his wife, said they had to face a lot of difficulty exchanging the notes. “Though they have provided some facilities inside the premises of the RBI to drink water, there is nothing outside the premises. As we all can see, there is a line of over 1,000 people outside the RBI office,” he pointed out.

Several people outside the RBI office in New Delhi, including Ashok, whose granddaughter Gullak had found some Rs 2000 notes in their home, demanded that the window to exchange and deposit Rs 2000 notes be reopened at commercial banks.

“The RBI should think on it again. The festival season is arriving and in the cleaning process we are finding Rs 2000 notes. To avoid such chaos, the facilities should be again available at commercial banks,” said one person standing outside the Delhi office of the central bank.

Rs 10,000 crore worth of Rs 2000 notes still in circulation

On October 20, RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das exuded confidence that all the remaining Rs 2000 notes would be exchanged or deposited. “Rs 2,000 notes are coming back and only Rs 10,000 crore is left in the system. The expectation is that the amount will also come back,” he said on the sidelines of an event in New Delhi.

Earlier this month, Das had said 87 percent of the Rs 2,000 denomination notes returned had been deposited in banks while the rest had been exchanged across counters.

On May 19, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) announced that the Rs 2,000 note which had been introduced in 2016 as part of a rapid remonetisation effort, would be phased out.

“Given the above, and in pursuance of the ‘Clean Note Policy’ of the Reserve Bank of India, it has been decided to withdraw the Rs 2,000 denomination banknotes from circulation,” the RBI said on May 19.

On May 24, the RBI Governor explained that the central bank was withdrawing the Rs 2,000 notes as the denomination was not being used much and high-denomination notes could lead to collateral issues.

“In our surveys, we found out that Rs 2000 notes were not being used at all... It (They) was (were) being used, but not commonly used,” the Governor said.